The Effect of Surface Topography on the Nonlinear Dynamics of Rossby Waves
Abstract
Boussinesq convection in rotating systems attracts a sustained attention of the fluid dynamics community, because it has intricate non-linear dynamics (Cross & Hohenberg 1993) and plays an important role in geophysical and astrophysical applications, such as the motion of the liquid outer core of Earth, the Red Spot in Jupiter, the giant cells in the Sun etc. (Alridge et al. 1990). A fundamental distinction between the real geo- and astrophysical problems and the idealized laboratory studies is that natural systems are inhomogeneous (Alridge et al. 1990). Heterogeneities modulate the flow and influence significantly the dynamics of convective patterns (Alridge et al. 1990; Hide 1971). The effect of modulations on pattern formation and transition to turbulence in Boussinesq convection is far from being completely understood (Cross & Hohenberg 1993; Aranson & Kramer 2002).
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 2003
- Accession Number
- ADP014795
Entities
People
- H. Pitsch
- O. Desjardins
- S. I. Abarzhi
Organizations
- California Institute of Technology